


Chuck vs. the Information Overload

by Alexis_Rockford



Series: Fictober 2019: Two Heads Are Better Than One [3]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fictober, Fictober 2019, Gen, London, London Underground, Missions Gone Wrong, Season/Series 04, The Intersect (Chuck)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-11-28 11:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexis_Rockford/pseuds/Alexis_Rockford
Summary: On a mission to extract a defecting nuclear physicist, the new bio-scan program in the Intersect malfunctions. Chaos ensues.This ficlet was written in response to the Fictober prompt for October 3, 2019: Prompt: “Now? Now you listen to me?”





	Chuck vs. the Information Overload

“Are you sure this upgrade is a good idea?” Chuck asked dubiously. He was seated in front of his father’s laptop, his arms tensely gripping the arms of his chair. “I mean, we’re about to go on a critical extraction mission, right?”

“You work for the CIA now, Bartowski,” General Beckman’s voice boomed from the monitor on the wall. “You’re always going to be on an important mission. Besides, it is vital to this particular assignment.”

“Oh?” Chuck’s eyebrows jumped in surprise. “I thought all we were doing was retrieving a nuclear scientist. The facial recognition software in the Intersect itself should be enough for me to recognize him, right?”

“Wrong,” barked John Casey with a shake of his head. “Dr. Bannacle has been on the run from the commies for years now. Our intelligence indicates that he had undergone several extensive surgeries to change his facial characteristics.”

“But one thing he can’t change no matter how hard he tries is the shape of his eyes,” Sarah finished, patting her fiance on the shoulder.

“Agent Walker is correct,” Beckman continued. “Once we install this upgrade, the Intersect will be able to isolate a biometric retinal scan of each face you search in addition to the simple facial recognition scan that occurs when you flash on a person. Crucial updates to the Intersect database itself based on new intelligence are also included.”

“Well, in that case,” Chuck said brightly. “Fire away!”

Beckman’s monitor blinked off and Sarah prepared to run the program on Orion’s laptop. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded and braced himself as the crazy colorful images bombarded his vision, downloading the new program into his brain.

****************

Two days later, the team was chasing their quarry through the queues of the London Underground.

“Did you get a good look at his face yet?” Casey shouted over the din of rush hour commuters.

“No,” Chuck returned miserably. “He keeps turning around too quickly.”

“Well, _maybe_ if you hadn’t spooked him-”

“Guys,” Sarah said breathlessly as they rounded a corner on to an escalator. “Less arguing, more running.”

“We don’t even know if this is our man, right?” Chuck slowed down to a jog on the moving staircase.

“The fact that he’s running is a pretty good indication that he _is_.” Casey reached under his jacket to where his trusty firearm was waiting.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” Chuck’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Casey, be careful with that thing! There are no open carry laws in the UK. In fact, there are no carry laws at all!”

“Beckman never said we had to bring him in unharmed,” John grumbled by way of an excuse. “It’s not our fault the idiot’s running.”

“So you’re telling me that shooting him would be for his own good?”

“Maybe.”

The escalator finally reached the top and they found themselves in a sea of people in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. “Did we lose him?” Sarah asked her partners.

“Hard to tell being that I didn’t get a good look at his face,” Chuck reiterated.

“I guess you’re just going to have to scan everyone.”

Chuck grabbed her arm as she ran up to him. “Are you serious? That’s a terrible idea!”

“Do you have any better ones?”

He sighed. “No.”

“Well, then, have at it! Let’s give this new program a test drive.”

Chuck turned to look at his fiancee. Big mistake. As their eyes met, information about every assignment she had ever been on began to flood his brain. “Ahhhhh!”

“What is it?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shut off the flash, but it was no use. Images from her Red Test flashed in front of him. Escapades from her days with the Cat Squad. Missions from her days with Bryce Larkin.

“I accidentally scanned your retinas and now this monster-sized flash is giving me a migraine.” Chuck blinked rapidly trying to get his pupils to stop rolling back into his head.

Casey caught up with them. “Is Bartowski having a seizure?” he asked with genuine concern.

“I’ll take care of him,” said Sarah. “You apprehend our guy.”

Chuck had a vague notion of Casey shuffling off into the crowd. He felt Sarah’s hand squeeze his as the interminable flash continued. Somehow, she managed to pull him off the middle of the pavement under the awning of a nearby shop front. She continued to hold his hand and speak soothingly to him until the slideshow of data finally finished. After a few moments, he felt it was safe to open his eyes again. “Wow,” was all he could think of to say.

He looked at Sarah out of the corner of his eye, trying to avoid flashing on her again. She seemed relieved that he was no longer glitching out in the middle of the London street, but he could sense that she was worried about something. “Are you ok?” is what her lips said, but Chuck could also read the undertone of “What did you see?”

“Now I am,” he said as quietly as he could while still being certain she heard him in the din. Several pedestrians had apparently stopped to stare at him while he was in the throws of the superflash, and they were gawping at him still. “I’m fine, folks. Move on. Nothing to see here.” One by one, the confused Londoners began to drift away.

He turned back to Sarah. Chuck didn’t normally avoid eye contact with anyone, let alone the love of his life, but after what had just happened, he was suddenly wary of the process. “I saw your past,” he said, staring fixedly at her aquiline nose.

“What part?” In his peripheral vision, he could see her brilliant blue eyes flicker with anxiety.

Chuck swallowed audibly. “Pretty much all of it. Anything that would be in your personnel file anyway.”

Sarah looked down at her hands, and Chuck breathed a sigh of relief that he could face her directly again. “Do you want me to explain anything you saw?” she asked in a voice that was both incredibly soft and utterly steeped in pain.

He shook his head, and touched her shoulder reassuringly. “You never have to explain anything to me, Sarah. I have complete trust in you. I hope you know that by now.”

She smiled up at him, continuing to avert her eyes. “I know. It’s just nice to hear it every now and then.”

He pulled her into his arms and they stood there in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of London, just clinging to each other. For comfort, for warmth, and for some other primal need that neither of them could describe but both understood had just been satisfied.

After an interminable period of time, Casey reappeared with his arm suspiciously around the man they had been pursuing. “Doctor Bannacle, I presume?” Sarah quipped as the four of them ducked into a nearby alley.  
.  
“Only one way to find out.” Chuck took a deep breath and focused on the stranger’s pupils. He waited for a few seconds, but nothing seemed to happen. “Uh, I don’t think this is our guy. The Intersect database is coming up blank.”

“Are you kidding me?” Casey wheezed. “I just spent twenty minutes chasing this loser through the busiest section of one of the busiest cities in the world!”

“This new upgrade is more trouble than it’s worth,” Chuck muttered.

Casey turned to their guest. “If you aren’t Bannacle, why did you run?”

The slightly overweight man squirmed uncomfortably in Casey’s grasp. “You seemed a dangerous bloke,” he offered lamely.

Casey emitted his signature growl and released his meaty hand from the man’s arm. With a glint of silver, the suspect produced a cruel-looking knife from his sleeve and in a moment, had it against Sarah’s throat. John scrambled for his gun, but the man pressed the cold steel closer to her jugular. “I wouldn’t,” he said darkly.

“I thought you said he wasn’t our guy!” Casey rounded on Chuck with his typical fury.

“Now? Now you listen to me?” Chuck retorted, throwing his hands up in the air both from exasperation and to show the man he was unarmed.

“These reflective contacts sure came in handy,” the man, who apparently was their rogue scientist announced.

“Please, Dr. Bannacle,” Sarah crooned soothingly. “We don’t want to hurt you. We’ve been sent to rescue you.”

“The last time someone said that to me, my wife and children ended up dead.”

While the scientist told his sad story, Chuck quickly scanned the rest of his body, hoping desperately to flash on something. A strange patch on the man’s jacket caught his eye. Chuck felt his eyes slowly cross as the information pertaining to the symbol entered his mind. “You belong to the secret order of Chernobyl,” he suddenly blurted out.

Bannacle stared at him, his unnaturally green eyes puzzled. “What did you say?”

“You are a member of an elite group of scientists who were invited to perform a study on the wildlife that emerged following the nuclear disaster,” he continued. “Your discoveries were considered too dangerous to be released to the public, so the Soviet government had your entire group killed. You were the only one who escaped. That symbol on your jacket was designed by your wife before she died to commemorate each of the other nine who were slaughtered.”

“I’ve only told that story to one person,” Bannacle murmured, slowly lowering the arm with the knife.

“Gregory Tuttle.”

Once again, the scientist seemed startled. “Yes! How did you know?”

“We currently have him in custody,” Casey explained. “His real name is Alexei Volkov. He’s been giving us information as a part of his efforts to make reparations for all the harm he’s done.”

Bannacle shook his head in disbelief. “I met him once in a pub. I never knew he was a criminal.”

Sarah inched away from Bannacle and soon was beside her fiance. “That’s putting it mildly. I bet he was sizing you up to see if you fit his team.”

“Anyway,” Chuck interrupted, hoping that this additional information wouldn’t scare away their asset, “will you come with us now?” His warm hazel eyes reinforced the entreaty.

Bannacle’s gaze shifted between the three of them and finally landed on Chuck. “Yes, I will. You have an honest face, son.”

Chuck could feel his cheeks growing warm. “Er, thanks.”

As they led him back toward the Underground, Chuck turned to Sarah. “I guess the upgrade was necessary to this mission after all.”

“We’ll convince Beckman to at least let us uninstall the bio-scan feature as soon as we get back,” she replied without even blinking.

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best,” he quickly agreed, recalling the way the Intersect had unceremoniously tipped over an entire closet’s worth of Sarah’s dirty laundry onto the already cluttered floor of his mind.

She said nothing further, but her amused smile reassured him that everything was still good between them. That they were still good. Better than good. And despite all the craziness that had transpired throughout the day, he couldn’t help but smile back.


End file.
